Bradshaw 'softens file-sharing measures'

Culture secretary Ben Bradshaw has said that the government's controversial approach to tackling illegal file-sharing will be moderated in the wake of widespread criticism.

Last month, business secretary Lord Mandelson moved to toughen the anti-piracy measures outlined in the Digital Britain report to place the power to suspend connections of targeted copyright infringers in the hands of the secretary of state rather than regulator Ofcom.

However, Bradshaw told the Commons culture, media and sport committee that any content rights holder requesting to cut off the connections of persistent copyright infringers would have to first secure a court order, reports The Guardian.

He said that suspensions would be used as a "very last resort" for the most serious cases of infringement and would never happen just "on the basis of an accusation". Targeted offenders would also have full rights to appeal against the decision.

Under the present arrangement, anyone who persistently downloads illegal content is merely sent a series of warning letters requesting that they desist.

Around 100 musicians have signed up to a Featured Artists Coalition plan for a 'three strikes' approach to the problem, in which copyright infringers would get two letters of increasing severity before their connection is 'throttled' - reduced to just basic web surfing and email.

However, TalkTalk has been highly critical of both approaches as they are based on the principle of "guilty until proven innocent".

The service provider recently staged a wireless stunt to demonstrate that pirates will simply side-step the measures by hacking into the connections of innocent users to continue file-sharing illegally.